"She implied—implied—made me think——"
"Made you think?" said the guide in disgust. "Made you think? That's what's been the matter with you all along;—you think too much. You wanted a bigger parish, Reverend Father, to occupy your time and mind. St. Ignace was too small."
This tone of banter was the one least calculated to appease the jealous and vindictive spirit holding Ringfield in its grasp. He became whiter, more agitated, and held up one hand as if to guard himself, yet there was nothing furious in Crabbe's manner; rather the contrary, for he was relieved at hearing of the natural misapprehension by which he had been looked upon as Angeel's father. But Ringfield was difficult to convince. No gossip had reached him where he lay at Archibald Groom's, with Madame Poussette watching him, nor at the Hotel Champlain where he had staggered the night before for a mad moment only, as he asked for news of Crabbe and was told that he gone back to St. Ignace; therefore he knew nothing of the affaire Archambault, as some of the provincial papers called it, and had heard only the bare facts of Henry Clairville's death and burial. To complete his ignorance, the charitable institutions to which he had written had neglected to answer his letters, for such an offer coming from such a source required time for consideration, and his brain, neither a subtly trained nor naturally cunning one, was incapable of those shifting drifts of thought which occupy themselves with idly fitting certain acts to certain individuals. His literal mind had always connected. Miss Clairville, from the day of the Hawthorne picnic, with Angeel, and to be told that they were not, as he had supposed, mother and child, was only to merge him in the absolutely crushing puzzle of a question—whose child then could she be? Might it not be—for here at last his mind gave a twist, fatal to its usual literal drift—her child by some one other than Crabbe? For who could mistake the eyes and their expression, the way the hair grew on the forehead, the shape of the hands, white and firm like Pauline's,—resemblances all made the stranger by association with the unnaturally formed head and shoulders of the unhappy child?
The two stood facing each other; the Christian minister, originally a being of blameless instincts and moral life, but now showing a countenance and owning a temper distorted to sinful conditions from the overshadowing of the great master passion; and the battered exile, genuine, however, in his dealings with himself, and sincere in the midst of degradation. So the Pharisee and the publican might have stood. So in all ages often stand those extreme types, the moral man who has avoided or by circumstances been free of temptation, and the sinner who yet keeps a universal kindliness or other simple virtue in his heart. Anguish in one was met by cheerful contempt and growing pity in the other, and once more Crabbe essayed to reason with Ringfield.
"Believe me," he said, "I would give way to the better man, and you, of course, are he, if I thought Miss Clairville's future would thereby be benefited, but I cannot imagine anything more uncongenial than the life which you—pardon me—would be likely to offer her. She has no money and she loves money. She is tired of her home and all these surroundings; I can take her from them for ever. She is gifted, intelligent, and brilliant, and I can show her much that will interest and transform her. She runs a risk, certainly, in marrying me, but she knows my worst, and by Heaven—Ringfield, there's a power of comfort in that! No setting on a pedestal, no bowing to an idol—and then perhaps she will help in the working out of the tiger and the ape, make the beast within me die. How the old familiar lines come back to one here in this solitary place! I suppose I'll go down to Oxford some day and see my old rooms,—take Pauline. We'd like to keep in touch with you, Ringfield, send you a line now and then after you leave St. Ignace, for I don't figure you remaining here all your life at the beck and call of Poussette."
Ringfield's eyes were on the ground, for a deep mystification still possessed him; he had scarcely heard the latter part of Crabbe's speech, for there remained unanswered that question in his tortured mind—whose child was Angeel if not Pauline's, for he still saw the basket-chair with the dreadful face in it as he looked down in the barn, and still heard those damaging whispers from Enderby the night of the concert.
A groan escaped him; he threw a pained and bitter glance at Crabbe and again studied the ground.
"I find it hard to believe you. Hard, hard. The people at Hawthorne all say it was—it was her's. Enderby told me."
"God help you for a silly lunatic if you listen to the tales of country people, Ringfield! They may have said so, they may have said all kinds of stuff—I never spoke of it to a living soul myself, even in my cups; I'll swear I left it alone even then."
"But now, now you can speak! The time has come to speak! If not you, then who, who could be that poor child's father!"